Thursday, September 10, 2009

Lifehacker readers tell us how they get cheaper gym memberships, clean up spilled eggs, and remove crayon from our walls.

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About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox (tips at lifehacker.com), but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption.

Wait Until the End of the Month for a Cheaper Gym Membership

Take it from someone who's sold gym memberships for a few years, it takes two visits and an end of the month special to get the best deal. What you need to do is visit the facility once in the middle of the month for a tour. Don't purchase a membership that day, but instead wait for one of the sales people to call you at the end of the month. They need to make their quotas and will offer you the best deal then!

Clean Up Eggs With Salt

Clarissa shared a trick that I'll definitely try the next time I fail at juggling eggs:

My favorite kitchen clean up trick is to shake some salt over spilled eggs. If you do that and leave things sitting for a few minutes, you'll be able to wipe egg off a floor or counter without it slipping and sliding everywhere. It'll practically stick to the dishtowel.

Remove Crayon From Walls With Vinegar

I've got artists in the family, unfortunately the younger ones use their walls as a canvas. I struggled to scrub crayon marks from the walls or paint over them for months until my mother-in-law shared a trick with me.

She told me that a bit of white vinegar can be used to scrub crayon marks off walls without destroying the paint underneath and 'lo and behold, it works. I used a dish sponge soaked in vinegar to rub the marks off without any hassle.

Robin tells us about how she keeps her coffee safe while grocery shopping:

Don't know if you have the same problem I do. I often found myself holding my coffee in one hand and trying to shop with another at supermarkets. Today, the light bulb hovering over my head went off, I tied a plastic bag (the ones found in the vegetable section) in a loop in the corner of the shopping carts. Now both of my hands are free and the coffee is out of reach of my two year old.

Looks like Robin's grocery store needs the cup holders built into the carts at mine. Until that happens, hers seems like a good solution.

Know Which Class is Next Without Constant Schedule Checking

Marshal has a neat trick to avoid looking like a Freshman every semester:

College recently started again, and since it's always a pain to pull out your printed schedule, and not to mention a little newbie-seeming, I came up with the quick idea to type up my schedule, photograph it and set it as my phone's background. That way if I ever forget what time or room my class is in, I can just peek at my phone's home screen and be on my way. I've showed a couple people here how to do it and they seemed genuinely pleased with the results, so I figured I would share and maybe help out a couple more. I've attached a pic of my home screen to give you the idea. It has the class title, time, and building/room number for each class. Mine works with the left being MWF and the right column being Tu/Thu.